“Well, now you’ve got me, so don’t worry. The first thing to do is to decide what kind of ghost we’re dealing with here. It’s obvious, firstly, that it’s a woman. Are we agreed on that? We are? Right. And she’s most likely from the Victorian times, judging from her old-fashioned floral perfume and how old the house is and everything. Let’s say 1880s, 1890s, right? Now, what kind of terrible tragedy might have befallen her? Let’s see now. Okay, so, she might have been a governess or something who fell in love with the handsome young son of the house. She gets pregnant, he can’t marry her because he’s already betrothed to a rich countess or something and, anyway, our little governess is only a commoner. The son of the house can’t possibly marry her so . . . erm, so she goes up into the attic and hangs herself from the rafters. Now she spends all eternity waiting to be reunited with the soul of her lover and their unborn child. Are there any rafters in this house, by the way? Where do people normally keep them, anyway?”
“Wow, Pip, why don’t you write gothic romance mysteries instead of a magazine column on modern dating and relationships and shit? You clearly have the mindset for it,” Nicola teased again.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it,” replied Philippa smugly. “One day, Sis, one day. So, back to our little Victorian governess friend, then. Maybe she’s looking for a replacement for the man she loved? Maybe it’s Shane she’s after!”
“Then why isn’t she breathing and sighing on him, then? Why am I the one she contacts?”
“True, true. Wait a minute, wait a minute now, maybe it’s a replacement child she’s after, to replace the one she had who died when she hanged herself . . . ?”
“Don’t even think about it,” said Nicola sternly.
“Right, right,” Philippa replied hurriedly, too late thinking of her little niece and nephew out in the garden playing. “You’re right. it’s probably not that at all. I never much cared for The Woman in Black anyway. All style and no substance. And it put me right off that it was Harry Potter in the lead role. I kept looking round the whole time for Ron and Hermione. Look, how’s about you take me on a tour of the house? There’s probably at least a half-a-dozen rooms I haven’t properly explored yet. We can look for clues to the mystery.”
“Okay, grand.” Nicola got up from the table. “Just like we’re the Five Find-Outers or the Secret Seven or the Famous Five or one of those.” The sisters had cut their reading teeth on Enid Blyton.
“Exactly! And we’re not forgetting you, Mr. Chardonnay,” Philippa said fondly, grabbing up the wine bottle for the tour. We could never forget you, my precious darling bottle of life-improving booze.”
“Let’s start with the cellar,” Philippa said. “You do have a cellar here, right? All big old houses have got to have a cellar. It’s practically the law.”
“Well, it’s more of a basement room, really.”
Nicola led her sister out of the kitchen and across the hall, to the door that opened onto a darkened staircase leading down into the bowels of the house.
“I’ll just switch on the light here. This was one of the first things I made Shane do when we moved in: put in a working lightbulb here. No way was I going down into a pitch-black basement to look for the Christmas decorations or the spare portable telly.”
“Quite right too,” said Philippa approvingly. “Crikey, this place is a bit spooky, isn’t it?”
She looked round at the enormous, mostly empty space in which she found herself. Shane and Nicky’s boxes and tea-chests of spare stuff, their contents all clearly marked on the outside in felt-tipped marker pens, barely filled up a corner of the huge room. There was tons and tons of room left, to fill with practically anything they wanted.
“You could fit a small country in here, Nic. Are you just going to leave it half-empty like this?”
“Shane is thinking of making it into a sort of a man-cave for himself. Putting in a flatscreen telly and a fridge for cold beers, even a pool table for him and his mates.”
“Isn’t it well for some?” Philippa laughed. “Why can’t you have it for a woman-cave, only use the fridge for wine and chocolate and to hell with the pool table?”
“It gives me the creeps down here, that’s why,” Nicola admitted. “I much prefer the upstairs rooms, where there’s lots of light and you can look out into the garden. Down here gives me the shivers. I wouldn’t want to feel, I don’t know, kind of cut off from the upstairs. Down here makes me feel sort of . . . sort of entombed.”
“Are you getting any supernatural vibes down here right now?” Philippa refilled her glass from the bottle, then took a long swig of her wine.
Nicola shook her head. “Nothing at all.”
“Have you ever felt any supernatural vibes down here before?”
Again, the shaking of the head. “Nothing at all down here. I told you, Philly, I make it my business to come down here as little as possible.”
“That’s a shame. Basements are normally jammers with supernatural shit. And it’s a shame as well that there doesn’t appear to be a fruit cellar down here. That’s where Norman Bates keeps his mother, you know, when he doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s still got her with him. She sits all day down here just rocking, rocking, rocking away in her old rocking chair, with the dim light from the one bare bulb shining straight through her hideously empty eye sockets. Ow!” She screeched when Nicola punched her on the arm. “That actually hurt, you evil bitch!”
“It was meant to.” Nicola turned to go back up the stairs.
In the huge sitting-room on the ground floor, the sisters stood side by side.
“Is there anyone here?” Philippa called out in what she felt was a suitably otherworldly voice “Is there anyone there who’d like to make contact with us? D’you sense anything, Nicky?”
Nicola shook her head. “It might be a case that whoever, or whatever it is, won’t put in an appearance while there’s the two of us here,” she suggested. “It might just be me on my own she wants.”
“Nonsense.” Philippa started briskly pulling open the cupboards that lined the walls but found only the kids’ toys, books and other random bits-and-pieces of household detritus. “Ghosts love attention. They’re desperate for it, starved for it, even. Wouldn’t you be if you’d been haunting a house on your own for, like, a hundred years, and then suddenly a family moved in? You’d be trying to make contact with them in every way possible.”
“I suppose.”
“Helloooooooo!” Philippa hollered, her voice echoing in the spacious room. “Is there anybody there?”
But her calls went unanswered.
Out in the hallway, Philippa looked up towards the sweeping staircase triumphantly. “Ah-ha! This must be the staircase where the red rubber ball from The Changeling comes bouncing down the stairs one step at a time, bouncy bouncy bouncy, to come landing ominously at George C. Scott’s feet. And upstairs, one of the baths will be filling up with water of its own accord at this very moment and a secret door covered up by a bookcase or something leads the way to a hidden attic room where a child died a horrible death a hundred years ago tonight. This is probably a gruesome anniversary or something. How utterly delicious!”
She giggled, and Nicola shook her head at her sister as if to say, Where the fuck are you getting this mad stuff from? Out loud she said: “Gee, Sis, I hate to burst your bubble but the attic’s not hidden at all. There’s a perfectly good staircase leading up to it for all to see. A Stira, as a matter of fact, one of those nice handy pully-downy things you see on the telly.”
“You’ve no imagination, you haven’t,” grumbled Philippa as she ran ahead of her sister up the stairs.
“Just look out the landing window there for me and tell me if the kids are okay!” Nicola called up after her as she followed.
Philippa did as she was asked. Down in the garden, Little Nicky was chasing his older sister with what looked like a big dirty stick or half a tree branch he’d found on the ground. Kimmie was shrieking her
lungs out and running away as fast as her legs would carry her.
“They’re fine,” Philippa said and hurried on.
Up in the attic, which was enormous and just as easy to access as Nicola had said, Philippa poked into all the various corners and nooks and crannies. She shrieked when suddenly she spied the unmistakable black outline of a female figure standing silently by the one small window.
“Ah Jaysis, it’s only a mannequin with a sheet over it!” Philippa sighed with relief when she investigated closer.
“For my dressmaking business,” Nicola said. “That’s if I ever have time to pick it up again.”
“These things are as creepy as fuck.” Philippa pulled the sheets off no fewer than four mannequins similarly draped in sheets. “Why don’t you throw them away, or give them to the local Perverts’ Society? I’m sure they’d be glad of them as, you know, sort of instant girlfriends?”
“And what about my dressmaking business?” demanded Nicola.
“What about it? When was the last time you made a dress?”
“When was the last time I had the time?” Nicola sounded cross. “I’ve been slightly busy, remember, having two very active kids, moving house and supporting my husband’s career?”
“Keep your hair on, Nic,” Philippa said. “No one’s getting at you.”
They left the attic floor and went down to the master bedroom on the floor below.
“Now, this is more like it,” Philippa said. “I can sense a definite cold spot here.”
“Sorry, the window behind you is open,” Nicola pointed out.
“So it is.” Philippa clucked in disappointment. “Well, let’s go and check out the kids’ bedrooms then, see if anyone’s at least written ‘GET OUT’ in bloody capital letters on the walls or sent down an infestation of flies.”
“Pip, would you mindnot talking like that about my kids’ bedrooms, please?”
“Right, sorry.” Philippa flapped absentmindedly at her sister. “Oh look, one dead fly anyway,” she said hopefully, pointing to the deceased insect on the landing windowsill. “The start of an infestation, maybe?”
“One fly does not an infestation make, Pip.”
“Spoilsport. Wait a minute. I think I can hear some sort of ghostly music.”
“Sorry, that’s just my ringtone.” Nicola pulled her mobile phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. “Shane loves that song. It’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin. Hi, sweetheart,” she said into her phone then, clearly talking to Shane.
Philippa wandered away to give the couple some privacy to talk. In the first spare room she placed her wineglass and the bottle on a bedside table, then looked through all three spare rooms, opening wardrobes and poking into dresser drawers, all mostly empty except for some rather vintage-looking striped shelf paper, the kind housewives used to love to line their drawers with. Haha, line their drawers! She sniggered, the wine gone straight to her head as usual.
After about five minutes, she felt Nicola tap her lightly on the arm from behind.
“Right, Sis – let’s see if –” she began, but there was no one there.
The room was empty save for herself, and all was quiet except for the lightest of light sighs, a mere intake of breath really, but Philippa heard it clearly in the silence of the room. Genuinely spooked, she hurried back to the master bedroom, where Nicola was just hanging up after her chat with Shane.
“I think I’ve just met your ghost,” she told her sister in a rush. “Well, at least we haven’t been formally introduced but she – if it is a she – touched my arm and sighed at me in that spare bedroom over there just now.”
Nicola stared at her. “Are you serious? You’re absolutely sure?”
Philippa nodded. “I’m as sure as I can be,” she said grimly. “Someone – or something – that I thought was you just touched me on the arm back there and breathed on me.”
“What are we going to do?”
Philippa shrugged. “This is the point in the plot where we’re supposed to high-tail it to the local library and demand to see copies of their old newspapers on microfilm or microfiche or whatever they call it nowadays. Then we’d find out that someone died horribly here in a fire that once burnt the house to the ground back in 1899 or something, and that they’ve been haunting the place ever since, trying to find peace.”
“I kind of wish they’d find peace somewhere else.” Nicola sounded decidedly tetchy. “I’m really not sure I like the idea of sharing my new home with a ghost for the rest of my days. And what does it want, anyway? I mean, it’s all very well you saying that it wants to find peace, but how does it get this peace? And what exactly are we supposed to do to help it?”
“We could hold a séance,” Philippa said excitedly. “Have you got a ouija board?”
“Hang on, it’s in the kitchen drawer with the Sellotape and the pens with no tops, I’ll just get it,” replied Nicola sarcastically. “Of course I don’t have a bloody ouija board, Pip. Why would I? It’s not exactly the kind of thing you pick up in the pound shop next to the birthday candles and the baby wipes.”
“Ah well. It doesn’t really matter anyway, seeing as neither of us is able to use one. Maybe we could hold a séance without one. Like, with just ourselves and a few candles, maybe some spooky music. Once the kids are in bed, of course.”
“Speaking of the kids, can you have a look out that window there? See if they’re okay? You’re nearest.”
Philippa craned her neck out the window and had a look. Little Nicky had by now tied his loudly protesting older sister to a tree and was threatening her with the big dirty tree branch. His mouth was open in a soundless whoop of triumph. It was starting to rain and the sky was black and heavy with huge moisture-pregnant clouds.
“I already told you, they’re perfectly fine,” Philippa said. “Shall we go and look for candles, then? And is there any more wine?”
It was late in the evening now and the rain had been falling steadily for over an hour. The wind was starting to pick up too. Strictly Come Dancing was on the television in the sitting room and a dinner of spaghetti bolognese with a side-salad and garlic bread had been cooked by Nicola (with some ‘help’ from a tipsy Philippa) and wolfed down by everyone.
On the huge comfy sitting-room couch, wineglass in hand, Philippa was saying: “And I love Michael dearly, of course I do. I’ve known that pretty much from the moment I met him. The thing is, he’s not very open or forthcoming about his emotions and I’ve got this awful feeling that if I tell him outright that I love him, he won’t be able to say it back and he’ll just say ‘thanks’ or something horribly non-committal like that and I’ll be, like, totally fucking crushed. Like, I’ll never be able to lift my stupid fucking head up off the ground again for embarrassment, d’you know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean,” replied Kimmie solemnly. “But I think you’re not giving Michael enough cwedit here. I think if you talk to him honestly about how you feel, he might supwise you.”
“D’you really think so?” Philippa asked her niece hopefully, just as Nicola entered the room with a tray of tea and biscuits for after their meal. “Ah, good woman yourself! I see you’ve got a ton of candles for later.” Philippa gave her sister a knowing wink when she saw what else was on the tray.
“It’s not just for the séance, Pip. The weather’s turned really bad out there. It’s working itself up into a right old storm. It even said on the radio that there might be power cuts in parts of Leinster.” Nicola settled herself on the couch and poured the tea from the big teapot. “That’s us, by the way,” she added, handing Philippa a mug of tea.
“This house wouldn’t by any chance be built on an Indian burial ground, would it, Sis?” Philippa asked her sister suddenly. “Because if so, that would explain a lot.”
“In Ranelagh, Dublin? I doubt it.”
“Hmm, I suppose you’re right there.” Then: “Wait a minute. Would it have been a lunatic asylum at any point, d’you know? Or a pr
ison or even a workhouse or a fanny-waxing salon? Anywhere there might once have been tremendous suffering, you know?”
“I don’t know the history of the house, Pip.”
“Yes, sadly, that’s where the library’s old newspapers would come in handy, if we had access to them, that is.” Philippa stroked an imaginary beard thoughtfully, much to Kimmie’s amusement. “Is the local library still open?”
“At ten to eight on a Saturday night? Not a chance.”
“No harm. I’m sure the power of our own imaginations will work just as well. We can imagine what might’ve happened here, can’t we?”
“Would you mind not imagining it in front of the kids?” Nicola heaved a sleepy Little Nicky, surprisingly hefty for a six-year-old, up on to her lap. “Remember, little pitchers have big ears.” She nodded in Kimmie’s direction. “And, speaking of which, would you please watch your language around the kids? They’re picking up all sorts of filth from their Auntie Pip, who’s supposed to be setting a good example to them.”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” said Philippa, flapping her hand in assent with her mouth full of biscuit.
“I dwew some little pitchers in school yesterday,” Kimmie said, her mouth also full of biscuit, “but none of them had ears.”
“What was in your pitchers?” Philippa asked her keenly, before adding in an excited aside to Nicola: “We could be on to something here, Sis. Kids in horror films are always drawing pictures of the ghosts that are intruding on their families.”
“I’ll go and get them,” said Kimmie happily.
A minute later she skipped back into the sitting-room, clutching a sheaf of papers which she handed to Philippa, who was already wearing her Proud Aunty Pip face in readiness.
“Aw, aren’t these marvellous?” she cooed as she quickly leafed through them. “We must stick all these lovely dwawings, erm, I mean drawings, up on the fridge . . .”
Then suddenly her expression changed in mid-leaf.
“Who the fuck’s the guy in this pitcher?” she demanded of her niece.
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